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Recent data from the Office of Personnel Management suggests that the long-predicted retirement tsunami of federal employees may have started. As more and more baby boomers opt to retire, a vacuum of knowledge and experience is being left behind at many agencies. Some federal managers are now scrambling to figure out ways to ride out the wave.

Looks like the first wave of the retirement tsunami has started. A major surge is coming. Beginning January 1, 2014, FERS employees will receive full credit for unused sick leave. (similar to CSRS) Right now they receive 1/2 credit. For example, on January 1, 2014, a FERS employee with 2000 hours of sick leave will get an extra 6 months added to his/her service comp date. With pay freezes stagnating an employee's high 3, the extra time added from unused sick leave should be enough incentive for many baby boomer employees to retire.

Actually 2000 hours is almost equal to an additional YEAR, not 6 months, giving them almost full credit (A full year would require 2088 hours). Although they will get a full year, the actual financial benefit to them will be only hlaf since they receive only 1% per year for that last year, where a CSRS employee receicves 2%.

The big issue for the federal government is its inability to hire at the middle level. The few times outside people came in at the GS-13 - 14 level (middle management) it was a disaster. So much of what the federal government does is driven by a laundry list of laws and regulations that a newbie needs a couple of years to figure it out even if they are geniuses. Promoting people early is just a recipie for disaster.
Add to this the horrible hiring process, and you come up with a 2 year gap. For now, there is a backlog of competent people who haven't been able to get a raise because top managers were hanging on for 40+ years of service. If the wave is starting now, I suspect it will take a couple of years to get the remaining competent people into middle management. That works out to a competency gap somewhere around 2015-2016 that will last at least a couple of years.

Predicting 10 years, or 5 years, down the road is difficult, but predicting one MONTH into the future should be not so hard, especially when the predictor has all the past numbers to work with.
OPM expected less than 5,090 retirment requests for the month of March, but it received 7,090. This is off by 39.3%. A error of this magnitude, when we are only talking about a single month in the current year, is alarming, in my opinion. I believe OPM does not know what they are doing.

Having been waiting for OPM to process my non-retirement paperwork, I note that ALL resources seem to be attempting to respond to the retirement backlog-because it is forefront in both Congress and the Public eyes. At what point will people begin to note that OPM has been sitting on other paperwork (like my FERS buy back for prior service) for over 18 months and still nothing has been done! Truly amazing!!